Scarabaeus Sacer
by Katsu
Summary: Sequel to Anax Tristis. Duo, in desperate need of a vacation heads to Germany with Quatre and Trowa. They quickly discover that while the Black Forest may be mercifully free of vampires, it has its own, more frightening legends.


**Scarabaeus Sacer: Prologue**

Wufei brought me ice cream on the day they let me out.

Knowing Wufei as I did, I would have expected him to hunt down the most revoltig flavor imaginable. Soybean or garlic – and I shudder to even think it exists – natto. He had this thing about healthy food that meant he never enjoyed a good dessert, and if he had to suffer, so did everyone else.

Instead, he brought me rocky road. The good kind, with marshmallow fluff stirred through it rather than those rock-hard, dried-out little things most brands pretended were marshmallows.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself.

I knew they were going to let me out on the day I woke up,m clammy with sweat from another fever dream, and realized just how much the room stank. And just how badly I stank to go with it. It had been a long time – or at least it felt that way – since I'd been able to notice anything outside my own gnawing drug hunger. That hunger was gone.

I knocked on the door, trying not to notice the state of my hands (every bone and vein showing through pale skin, broken fingernails) or the state of the door (long gouges in the cheap press-board). "Guys?" I croaked. My tongue was so dry that it stuck to the roof of my mouth. "Can we light a match or something? I fucking stink."

Footsteps ran down the hall toward me. Locks on the door rattled. And then it opened, revealing Quatre, wearing a smile so luminous that it just about blinded me. "Duo!"

"In what's left of the flesh," I croaked. "I need a shower." I grimaced. "And a toothbrush. And food. In that order, if you please."

Quatre stepped into my cell, stopping at the edge of the mattress that took up most of the room, a horrified expression crossing his face. "Oh god. You weren't kidding." He hauled me up to my feet and pretty much dragged me down the hall. I didn't complain. My legs were shaking so bad that I doubted I'd be able to stand on my own.

Still, it was an improvement. And that fact alone made me with I could bring a couple of people back from the dead so I could kill them again.

Quatre whirled into action like a blond tornado. Before I knew what had happened to me, I was bathed, my hair was brushed out, and I was ensconced in a green plastic lawn chair in the shade of a giant cherry tree outside, complete with sunglasses perched on my nose and a glass of iced water at my elbow. I also knew where Trow was (in Tokyo), where Heero was (in Tokyo with Trowa), all of the current gossip, and that we were having less than average rainfall. Then Quatre was gone back into the house, presumably to douse my room with gasoline and light it off. Or at least I figured that would be the only way to kill off that stench. I'd know for certain when the house exploded behind me.

I settled back into the lawn chair, contemplating the idea of normalcy and just how fucking bizarre it felt. Call me a pessimist, but I also knew it couldn't last long. I'm Duo – the anti-normal.

Enter Wufei and the carton of rocky road.

And whoops, there went normal. It was a new record.

I gave Wufei my best approximation of a grin. For all I felt like ass that had been run over by a Gundam, I was out, alive, and as sane as I was likely to ever get. "Who are you and what have you done with Wufei?" I asked.

He stopped in his tracks, confusion plain on his face. "What?"

"Chocolate _and_ marshmallow? Hardly the food of warriors."

Now he rolled his eyes. "You must be feeling better. You're being obnoxious," he said. "Well, if you find it so alarming, I can remove it from your sight." He transferred the ice cream container to the crook of his elbow, turning as if to go.

"No, no, don't worry. I will help you expunge this stain on your honor," I said, waving a hand. "Bring it here so that I can destroy the evidence."

"Wufei smiled, walking over to sit next to me. "We're both destroying the evidence," he said. "I brought two spoons."

"If you must." I waved my hand imperiously. It was my best Relena impression to date. Wufei handed me a white plastic spoon and pried the top off the ice cream container. I dug out my first spoonful and stared at it so long that it was half melted before i finally put it in my mouth. I'd never tasted anything so good in my entire life. My eyes rolled back in my head and I slumped against the springy back of the lawn chair.

"I'm glad you approve," Wufei said.

"I can die happy now. I've had a taste of heaven. Roasting in flames for all eternity won't bother me one bit."

"You've already been through hell at any rate," Wufei said quietly.

"That, too." I shuddered. The phantom of all that pain and hunger niggled at my mind. I crushed it flat with another spoonful of cold chocolate paradise. We ate in silence for a while, racing the heat that wanted to melt the ice cream into soup.

I filled up far faster than I thought I would, dropping back in my seat with a sigh, the sticky spoon loose in my fingers. Now that I had to think, I realized there were big gaps in what I knew, left over from those few moments before I'd lost my mind in that locked room. Part of me didn't want to know. I wanted to pretend that the last however many weeks simply hadn't happened. But I wasn't that much of a coward, right? I looked down at my fingernails, still ragged, but at least no longer colored with dirt and dried blood.

Forget? Not fucking likely.

"Wufei, have you seen Zechs?" I asked. That seemed the most important out of all the questions. Once, he'd been a faceless enemy, Captain Pantene in the world's gayest carnival mask. But shared suffering had a way of changing things.

Wufei shook his head. "I know he lives," he said, "but that is all. I have even gone so far as to write a letter to... Noin. She answered. She said that he is healthy, and that he is adjusting. Nothing more."

I didn't think it was a good enough answer, but at least it was something. "Adjusting. What a fucking word."

"It happens to us all," Wufei said. "Look at us. We're talking about sending a letter to a vampire."

I snorted. "Doesn't mean I have to like it," I muttered. Which was a bullshit answer. Frankly, I liked being able to adapt to my world jumping sideways. It was sure better than the alternative – getting left behind. What about you, Wufei? Are you adjusting?"

He fidgetted. It would have looked normal on anyone but Wufei. He took my discarded spoon and stuck it in the empty ice cream carton, then put on the lid with the care normally only shown to touchy things like nuclear reactors. He moved the container under the chair. He nudged it so it was a little further toward my feet. "I don't know," he finally said.

"You don't know," I repeated.

Wufei laughed softly. "Watching both you and Heero come to terms with being something... other, it looked not simple, but easier."

"It's always easier when it's happening to someone else."

"There's a small shrine a few miles away," Wufei said. "I've spent a great deal of time there meditating. And simply thinking." He hesitated, then continued, "The shrine's caretaker... I don't think he's involved in any of... this-" there was no doubting what he meant by 'this' "-but somehow, he understands. Or perhaps not so much understands as helps me understand." He shrugged one shoulder, then offered as an afterthought, "He's a folklorist."

That didn't mean a whole lot to me, other than a steer clear if things ever started smelling like survival horror. Those guys were evil magnets in computer games. "Does he know about vampires?" I asked.

"Not as such," Wufei said. "As legends, not what we know." He looked down at his hands. "He knows a great many stories of dragons."

"Dragons," I breathed. It brought back more confused sights and sounds of that last fight; Wufei exploding into the form of a dragon, the earthquake that went on and on in a steady rumble. "What are you, Wufei?" This idea, this word filled me with a sense of wonder that I hadn't felt since I was a kid. Dead things following me, Heero lighting shit on fire with the power of his brain – we wore our own skins for that. This idea seemed so much grander, greater – and as I thought about it – far more terrifying. What the hell was happening to us?

"I still don't know," Wufei said. "Or maybe I'm not ready to know. Or not strong enough." He shook his head. "The old man has told me one story, though, that strikes a chord with what little I remember of that time." He looked up at me, a few stray hairs hanging in front of his eyes. "Dragons are the pillars of the Earth. When they stir, the Earth shakes."

"Oh fuck me running with a soup spoon." The words about jumped out of my mouth.

Wufei laughed sharply, then leaned back, laughing again. The tension drained from his shoulders. "Oh... Duo, if only I had your way with words."

I giggled in reply. It sounded mostly sane. Go team, go. I calmed down with commendable speed. "So what does that mean?" I asked.

"What do your powers mean?" Wufei asked in return.

"Other than that I can't take any dates to work, no fucking clue," I answered. "Good point." Silence fell, and then I couldn't help it. I had to ask. "What did it feel like?"

Wufei hugged his arms around his chest. His muscles twitched. "Like I was someone else," he said. "I can't remember very much of it. But I remember flying." Just the way he said those last three words filled me with awe all over again. Wufei might be firmly in the Duo camp of being scared shitless, but I didn't think he would trade that one memory for anything in the world.

I nodded. "Then it's okay. We survived another one. The heroes triumph."

Wufei laughed. "So now what? Back on the job, blowing up military bases and thumbing our noses at Oz like nothing's happened?"

"That's what we've always done before," I said, then frowned. It wasn't like that had really bought us – or the rest of the world – a damn thing. I looked down at my too-thin hands. "I don't know. I think no matter what, next, I need a fucking vacation. One where they don't lock the doors from the outside."

"I can't imagine anyone arguing with that," Wufei said. "Where to?"

"Don't know. I have to think about it." I rested my hands on my stomach. "I have a couple things I need to do before I skip town, anyway. I have something of Hilde's – remember the weird... psychic girl? Something of hers I should give back. And I owe her the story about what happened with her dad."

"It's not a good story," Wufei said.

"I intend to lie as much as humanly possible," I answered. "Someone should still be able to sleep at night when all is said and done."

Wufei nodded, then gave me a sly smile. "Taking Heero on vacation with you after that?"

He wasn't expecting the reaction he got. My face went pale. My hands shook. "No," I said, trying to remain calm. Before all this had happened, I would have given my left nut to do just that. Just me and Heero, somewhere that we could quit circling each other and just fucking figure it out.

But that was then.

"Duo, what's wrong?" Wufei asked.

I shook my head. I even _sounded_ shaky. "You know how many nights he spent with his face up against the other side of the door, screaming every time I did?" I asked.

"What?" His eyes got wider.

"I don't remember anything else, but I remember that. Like I was hiding in Heero's head while I went out of my own." I shook my head. "I brought him back from the dead, once. He belongs to me in ways that I can't fucking begin to understand." I shook my head again, twisting my fingers around each other to stop their shaking. "I don't want to be alone with him right now, Wu. I care about the guy, a lot. But... god, I just need some fucking time to figure out where I end and he begins, now."

I looked at Wufei. His expression was confused, but he nodded. "How much time?" he asked.

"What?"

"How much time do you need, to get things sorted?"

"I don't know. I wish I did. I just... I need to get away. All of this is too fucked up. I need to glue all my pieces back together." I laughed. "I need to find all my goddamn pieces first. This is the most fucked up I've ever been in my life, and that's saying a lot."

Wufei nodded. "I'll take care of it," he said.

"How?" If I went somewhere, Heero would follow. I knew, because I'd do the same for him. We were both all stars at the game of stubborn.

"I'll think of something," he said. "I don't want to leave here for long, either. I need my own time and space. I'll find a way." For a moment he met my eyes. The look in his was unreadable. "For you."

"Tell me this'll work out somehow, Wu," I said. "Tell me it'll be better."

"It will work out, Duo," he said. "It will be better. Better than ever before, some day." He reached out and laid a gentled hand on top of mine, as if he were afraid I'd break.

Looking into his eyes, I realized that he wasn't lying. If the master pessimist could believe something that stupid, maybe I could, too.


End file.
